in _her_ kitchen. Fortunately for her, there lay, just
off and behind the kitchen, a roomy scullery, where
most of the dirty, and what may be called the smelly,
work connected with cooking was done.

To the left of the low-ceilinged, spacious, rather
dark scullery was Anna's own bedroom. Both the
scullery and the servant's room were much older
than the rest of the house, for the picturesque gabled
bit of brown and red brick building which projected
into the garden, at the back of the Trellis House,
belonged to Tudor days, to those spacious times when
the great cathedral just across the green was a new
pride and joy to the good folk of Witanbury.

As Anna stood at one of the kitchen windows,
peeping out at the quiet scene outside, but not drawing
aside the curtain -- for that she knew was forbidden
to her, and Anna very seldom consciously did
anything she knew to be forbidden -- she felt far more
unhappy and far more disturbed than did Mrs. Otway
herself.

This morning's news had stirred poor old Anna --
stirred her more profoundly than even her kind
mistress guessed. Mrs. Otway would have been surprised
indeed had it been revealed to her that ever
since breakfast Anna had spent a very anxious time
thinking over her own immediate future, wondering
with painful indecision as to whether it were not
her duty to go back to Germany. But whereas Mrs.
Otway had the inestimable advantage of being quite
sure that she knew what it was best for Anna to do,
the old German woman herself was cruelly torn
between what was due to her mistress, to her married
daughter, and, yes, to herself.

[[28]]

p027 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p028w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p029

v?